Sweden’s biggest banks are on a mission to get rid of branch banks and all the branch bank employees too.
That’s where “Aida” comes in. She’s available 24/7 and supposedly can handle all but your most complex needs. Your Banker, Aida Is Always In.
Aida is the perfect employee: always courteous, always learning and, as she says, “always at work, 24/7, 365 days a year.”
Aida, of course, is not a person but a virtual customer-service representative that SEB AB, one of Sweden’s biggest banks, is rolling out. The goal is to give the actual humans more time to engage in more complex tasks.
After blazing a trail in online and digital banking, Sweden’s financial industry is now emerging as a pioneer in the use of artificial intelligence. Besides Aida at SEB, there’s Nova, which is a chatbot Nordea Bank AB is introducing at its life and pensions unit in Norway. Swedbank AB is adding to the skills of its virtual assistant, Nina. All three are designed to sound like women, based on research suggesting customers feel more comfortable with female voices.
“Basically all banks are closing branches,” Mattias Fras, head of Robotics, Strategy and Innovation at Nordea, said in a phone interview. “This is a way to return to full service again.”
Swedish banks have already seen their customer satisfaction scores drop to a 20-year low after shutting branches and pushing people onto online services.
Satisfaction Slump
Fastest Way to Full Services
As banks closed branches customers satisfaction dove. Obviously, this is one of those cases where if it doesn’t work, you need to do more of it.
The fastest way to get to full services is to get rid of all the employees. Well not quite all of them, just those Aida, Nova, and Nina cannot handle.
“The goal is to give the actual humans more time to engage in more complex tasks.”
Yeah, right.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Cheaper than Indian call centers that seem to have difficulty understanding plain english? Bring it on.
(Michael Malice wanted a higher minimum wage to eliminate the clueless order takers that can’t get simple orders right – he wants to deal with a robot or kiosk!).
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Oh great, so you managed to get through their IVR system to talk to the Indian call center worker?
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True of so many actions driven by zealotry. “Obviously, this is one of those cases where if it doesn’t work, you need to do more of it.”
An old bible verse comes to mind. “Don’t muzzle the Ox.”
A drive to ultimate efficiency will backfire with unintended consequences. The Ox is best not muzzled, some inefficiencies (the human element) are just.
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Is it as a consequence of Swedish NIRP pressuring the banks to drive out cost?
If so, unemployment driven by NIRP adding to deflationary pressures?
The world is upside down. NIRP operating against the intended consequence of implementing NIRP.
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NIRP can be more deflationary than normalised rates if it drives unemployment up. When do they bite the bullet and get back above zero?
Meanwhile the banks are forced to cut costs but piss off their customers possibly causing long term damage to their brand/business.
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AI’s work very poorly, for a variety of reasons…https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071ZFF67S/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_dp
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No need to read the book, just try automatic Google translation from French, or Spanish. Lots of laughs reading it.
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Reblogged this on World4Justice : NOW! Lobby Forum..
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any bank that adopts a robot for a banker will go out of business
any person of means will not sign robo made documents with no ability to negotiate or have recourse. aida saves money short term but long term when a person whom comes in to take out 5mil loan is the one that leaves because the robot will not negotiate. so ultimately that bank goes out of business.
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“The goal is to give the actual humans more time to engage in more complex tasks.”
Calculating layoff payout can get very complex.
Actually, if the Swedes have callcenter turnover at the same rate we do in the US, it might very well be the case. Instead of continuous recruiting, hiring, training and watching them leave after a few months on the phone, just train an AI to do the basics. I’ve listened to calls, the vast majority are simple billing questions and the like. When the World Wide Web got going and became a good tool to self-directed help the hold music started promoting it in a big way in hopes of reducing the number of these sorts of questions. Of course the real problem is that a certain type of customer isn’t ever going to be happy with any explanation if there’s not an error (the bill is higher than they’d like but they don’t want to drop service) and no soothing female voices explaining anything will ever fix that.
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Some wear in the future I see pitch forks.( but then they say that has you get older you tend to see the dark side of things)
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If this work as well as Paypal’s automated help desk, plan for even more suicides in the socialist paradise.
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Fabian: theres nothing more socialistic than a bank that needs a bailout.
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I refuse to argue with him, he’s well known in the Fabian Society,
and it doesn’t get any more socialist than that.
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“All three……..sound like women…….customers feel more comfortable with female voices.”
Probably true, but that really depends on what she asks me to do 😙.
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Aida?! Curious name for a banker. Wasn’t she an Ethiopian who ended up getting buried alive?
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Retro
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It’s retro, alright. Radio Shack was still a profitable retailer.
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Yellen
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https://goo.gl/images/ZPvKTw
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If you were in NYC the day after John Lennon was murdered, you could’ve walked up to a news stand to purchase a newspaper which might actually have had some news about the horrible event.
Or not. The news stand would’ve had the current edition of Time, and it would be blathering on about robots, of all damned things.
To this very day, we are still being told about robots.
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Looks like Greenspan.
Tip – if you want the actual image to show in the comment make sure the link ends with .jpg or .png … sometimes you have to click on an image to open it by itself etc. to get the correct link from the address bar to copy.
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Didn’t know about the .jpg and .png
I just opened Share and “click on image” brought up the copy command which usually works well to directly include the image.
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… and it’s gone!
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If a computer can beat a person at chess, why would they want someone out to profit using one to manage them?
About the only leverage people realistically have with any service provider , is the knowledge that they are able to go into an office and face them off if there is any kind of complaint to make. No one is going to believe that a robot is sentient no matter how realistic it appears, instead people will be learning to interact coldly, where AI will set the example, maybe confusing people’s perception of reality at the same time.
Already there is a vast amount of “fraud” where people in responsibility are unreachable due to layers of “public relations” enacted by people. I am not convinced having robots there is going to improve that equation.
In fact there are various people warning that the integration of virtual reality into everyday life has the potential of being extremely destructive. I am not sure it would be understood to be, as it would seem a natural progression over generations… how are future generations going to relate to what we understand as having traditional meaning when they don’t experience that themselves?
It is something like – people have now conquered the natural world, future generations might conquer what it means to be a person… virtually. I think that would be a very dangerous threshold, given the examples we have of people who surpass their true ability by a wide margin in recent history.
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Next on deck for the AI robotic hit parade—Global Economic Trends Analysis Bloggers…
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Is she anatomically correct?
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Probably not. In today’s world one cannot be anatomically correct AND politically correct.
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“As banks closed branches customers satisfaction dove.”
Will the opposite be true? Will manned branches increase customers? If yes, why is at least one competitor trying that?
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Bank margin pressure because of NIRP?
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Can these robots open extra accounts in the customer’s name without the customer’s permission, like Wells Fargo bankers?
Can these robots force you to buy unneeded and overpriced car insurance with every car loan, like Wells Fargo bankers?
And can these robots send giant dividend checks to Warren Buffett so he can preach about everyone else’s ethical shortcomings while he benefits from rigging Treasury auctions (Sololmon bros), selling derivatives to hide losses (Gen Re / AIG), mislabeling MBS finance as industrial loans (GE capital), doing “Gods work” (Goldman), and loan sharking disguised as RV sales?
Can these robots lose $9 billion using an excel spreadsheet with copy/paste errors? Can the robots go on TV and call this $9 billion loss a “tempest in a teapot”? Can the robots say that with a straight face?
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If the robots can go on TV and say the “subprime contagion appears well contained” — while wearing a beard and smirking, they might be able to replace the Fed.
What about saying the economy is staging a strong recovery, and therefor we need emergency 0% lending rates and emergency debt monetization because the recovery is so strong? Can the robots say that with a straight face?
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Yes, a robot CAN declare that the subprime contagion appears well contained, but only if the following two (2) conditions are met :
1.) the robot studied The Great Depression in college
2.) the robot has enough “courage to act”
Finally, since it’s a robot, we needn’t worry about it ever expressing “irrational exuberance” over anything involved with banking.
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Robots get taught
1) The Great Depression is where a human pushes on the power button.
2) Courage to act correlates with having oil applied to its hinges and system greasing.
Yes, only rational exuberance, at least until the Fed discovers the effect of playing with the voltage control and/or tries to teach it the significance of being underwater.
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The robots will surely be trained to say, “I do not recall, Senator”.
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Here is an unintended consequence: the bot may do something that creates so much fear among customers that a run on the bank takes place.
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Vending machines and automated attendants in every customer service job? Sounds like another prediction in the movie “Idiocracy” is on its way to becoming true:
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If so, unemployment driven by NIRP adding to deflationary pressures The world is upside down. NIRP operating against the intended consequence of implementing Nirp….
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Went to the new chase bank branch. Looks like a T-Mobile phone store. One guy behind a teller and two people in back that come out if it gets crowded. No money available. It is dispensed behind bulletproof glass in another room. Atm machine avaiable. Whole thing no bigger than a Starbucks.
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This future is not good. Something has to change
Dehumanisation of services offered to humans, taken too far, will backfire.
Some system inefficiencies are necessary for society to work.
We spend our limited time on earth earning money to give it to banks that interface by machines with the risk someone freezes access. Next there will be no physical money.
BATTERY HENS farmed for tax.
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Human interaction and the formation of strong society is partly driven by necessity/service. Replace all those points of contact and cooperation and society will surely change, probably become more isolated in spite of new opportunity not to, as subservience is a lesson in humility and the reward of group action , as opposed to everyone feeling satisfied by a false sense of superiority. Not necessarily to go that way but people will need to make the effort in some other way to compensate.
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http://www.peakprosperity.com, crash course.
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As seen on Zero Hedge: “JPM Develops A.I. Robot To Execute High Speed Trades, Put Humans Out Of Work”
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HFT (high frequency trading) robots is part of the manipulation of equity markets today. It´s not like when I grew up, that manipulation of markets was not allowed. This could lead to strict punishments some years ago. Atleast for ordinary people.
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